The Suspicions Of Mr. Whicher: The Murder At Road Hill House

The Road Hill House murder case of 1860 shocked the public because it dealt with the brutal death of a little boy named Saville Kent. This case also brought to light the new profession of the detective. Because the local police could not solve the case, a detective was sent from London. The detective, Jack Whicher, examined the case and suspected that the little boy’s sister, Constance, committed the murder, but was not able to produce the dressing gown that he believed proved her guilt. Kate Summerscale’s novel, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House, examined Whicher’s role in the Road Hill House murder case. The development of the Victorian detective novels relied on the creation of the ‘celebrity detective’ and the image of the celebrity detective relied on an actual person and their success in solving murders. The Whicher that …show more content…
According to Haia Shpayer-Makov in From Menace to Celebrity: The English Police Detective and the Press, c. 1842-1914, since “most of the public had no direct contact with detective, the major source of information about them was the press.” Because the public largely received their information about detectives from the press, the negative images that the press presented overwhelmingly dominated the opinions of the public. These images were not pleasing and it only further degraded the image of detective when it was reported that they wore plain clothes when on duty. The press made the new detectives look sly and portrayed them as invaders of private life. The public felt like the new detectives violated their freedom and privacy. With these images and opinions dominating the public, detectives could not be popular figures in literature. They were not popular in real life and, therefore, would certainly not be popular in a novel. Before detective fiction could develop as a genre it needed a face to represent the entire detective